The weblog of Norman Geras

May 27, 2008

For a league of democracies

I posted earlier this month briefly supporting the idea of a league of democracies. In today's Guardian Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary general, argues the case against it. I shall consider his main arguments in turn.

The first of them is that the creation of a league of
democracies would amount to moving on from the UN, or - as he also puts
this - to subtracting the world's democracies from that
international body. But one doesn't have to conceive the initiative in
this way. It's a well-understood matter of everyday politics that
individuals and groups often concert their actions with others with
whom they see themselves as sharing certain commitments or interests,
and there's no reason why the same thing should not apply at the level
of the international community. A league of democracies doesn't have to
be seen as an alternative to the UN; it can be an organization existing
in addition to the UN, its member countries acting together, when they
see fit, whether inside or outside the wider body.

A second concern of Tharoor's is that a league of democracies
could be seen as a vehicle of external intervention in the affairs of
one country or another when there is a crisis putatively demanding such
intervention and the UN fails to act. I've argued here before that
intervention can sometimes be justified without UN authorization. But
the case for a league of democracies and the argument over the
conditions for justified intervention are separable. One could support
the former even believing that the UN should be the one and only
arbiter when it comes to military intervention. A league of democracies
could concert its actions in other ways than militarily: trying to
exert political influence; hoping to serve as a political example.

Sharoor is sceptical how effective a league of the sort
envisaged could be, given that democracies have other affinities that
are important to them than those they would share with members of the
league itself. But this, again, is a normal phenomenon of political
life - sharing some interests and priorities in one direction, others
in another, and so on. It's not clear why the point has any force. In a
way it should even quiet the worries of opponents of a league of
democracies. If these alternative affinities outweigh the democratic
affinities, it is unlikely to get off the ground.

Then he's concerned that a league of democracies might
reinforce the sense of rejection of the non-democracies. It's not clear
to me why that is a sensibility any democrat should care about. As I
said in my previous post,
this isn't so much a matter of rejection as it is one of
self-exclusion. An organization devoted to certain principles is not
obliged to admit those who don't share them.

Finally, Sharoor rather begs an important question by
predicating the UN's 'legitimacy across the world... not in the
democratic virtue of its members, but in its universality'. There are
different forms of legitimacy, and universality doesn't always confer
this. The UN Human Rights Council is a joke. The UN's standing by to
genocide hasn't enhanced its reputation either. Democracy itself doesn't
always confer legitimacy - as opponents of torture can understand quite
straightforwardly, knowing as they will that democratically elected
leaders or assemblies cannot make torture legitimate. Equally, no
international body, however universal, can make inaction in the face of
genocide legitimate. So we struggle along juggling the complexities and
the competing criteria of right and wrong and what is possible and what
is prudent. Universality of membership has some moral force; democratic
legitimation has a moral force all its own. It is one that we should be
in favour of strengthening.